Firemen, Cops, Judges Still Parking Illegally Downtown
Downtown Brooklyn is still the capital of parking abuse by government employees, despite widespread exposure of the issue. In addition to the Adams Street bike lane, which we’ve been harping about for some time, other problem spots include Gold Street off Myrtle Avenue where a check by The Daily News last week found 29 cars…
Downtown Brooklyn is still the capital of parking abuse by government employees, despite widespread exposure of the issue. In addition to the Adams Street bike lane, which we’ve been harping about for some time, other problem spots include Gold Street off Myrtle Avenue where a check by The Daily News last week found 29 cars of firefighters illegally parked, six of them on the sidewalk and Jay Street, where cops and firefighters were parked at expired meters with impunity. “They park in front of hydrants, crosswalks and bus stops,” said Michael Burke of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which has been advocating parking reform in the area. “It’s a safety issue,” he said. “It adds to a sense of lawless in the community.”
Downtown Brooklyn Is Place for Parking Abuse [NY Daily News]
Checking In On the Adams Street Bike Lane [Brownstoner]
clueless, clueless, clueless…..
if you never have time for anything nothing will ever get changed.
there has to be 100 photogs on this blog.
20 a day.
once a week.
make a blog record of it. keep doing it. consider it like a food co-op shift.
it should be fun overturning rocks and shining some light on things.
you dont have to be a qualified/vetted journalist. just a body with a camera.
i have a body. i have a camera.
just need 99 more. it’ll be “a movement.”
Haven’t there been a lot of studies showing that adding more parking attracts more cars? Also, there *is* parking in the area. But, unlike quasi-legal placard parking, it’s not free.
Here’s an idea for civil servants: no parking placards but free weekday MetroCards. And, as Townhouse Lady points out, maybe some time-limited free parking passes for people who really need to drive to courts.
Who has that kind of time bkn4life? Unemployed investment bankers maybe but a couple of inconsiderate civil servants parking illegally just isn’t that important to most of us that we would resort to stalking in an attempt to stop them.
what if 20 photographers were there every morning? telephoto lenses. 20 blogs.
lets set public policy via pressure from the public.
lets see 20 people get arrested every day because judges were parking illegally. time for some pitchforks here.
what if 20 photographers were there every morning? telephoto lenses. 20 blogs.
lets set public policy via pressure from the public.
lets see 20 people get arrested every day because judges were parking illegally. time for some pitchforks here.
I’m all for spending and for investing in infrastructure, but it’s not an excuse to push through any old project. New city owned parking structures which serve primarily as free parking for government employee commuters is simply not a good use of government/stimulus dollars. (Garages that house government owned vehicles for use by government employees in the course of business I might be willing to concede, but for the most part that’s not what we’re talking about.) I can think of many many better ways to spend stimulus money on transportation that would benefit large segments of the population, not just an arbitrary few. Mass transit is one. How about our airports, which are so far over capacity that they snarl the entire US air network. Or, if you want to talk cars, let’s discuss the Gowanus expressway, which is under endless repair because nobody will come up with the money to give it the full overhaul it needs. The point of spending in a recession is not just to hire construction works to pour any old slab of concrete, it’s to invest in projects that lay the groundwork for recovery.
Anyway, you’ve changed the topic. A small number of civil servants may have a legitimate need to drive to work. They will need to be accommodated one way or another. For those who use it simply as a convenient means of commuting, it’s not ok to create hazards in the neighborhood, and it’s not ok to devote large chunks of taxpayer money.
Sam you are so right. I don’t think that misuse of placards is honorable but it is just one of those things. Civil servants have become the scapegoats. In this economic climate, I sure as hell wish that I had taken a civil service job. We weren’t complaining much about their perks when ours – those of us in private industry – were better than theirs.
So what if we started harassing cops and judges as they got into their illegally parked? We’d probably get arrested by one of that cop’s friends and then sentenced to life in prison by one of that judges buddies. The other cops would then start harassing us! They could issue tickets for every minor infraction of law like jaywalking, not signaling when turning on a bike or in car, etc…
The political solution would be to find a candidate for mayor who will seriously make this a priority by letting his Police Commish know that he/she meant business. Of course that candidate wouldn’t win. So just build the parking lot like Sam said.
zqri, we obviously could not disagree more. It would not make sense to build a garage structure except that the area is so dense and crowded. And the fact that it is an expensive neighborhood would mean that the parking spaces set aside for the public could bring in a good revenue stream.
I actually think that public works like a new civic center garage is just what we need right now to boost the economy, spend some stimulus dollars, and get people working. The clueless believe that what we need to do is not spend, but actually the opposite is true.
You know we are not going to get through this depression by hoarding our pennies and bad-mouthing cops and other civil servants. As FDR would say: we have nothing to fear but fear itself.